School-based civic education is given a crucial role in developing youths’ democratic competences (Galston 2001). A large body of research examined effects of civic education in general school education, whereas civic education at vocational schools is so far hardly investigated (Busse et al. 2022). In many European countries, vocational schools provide not only learning opportunities for trainees’ vocational education and training (VET) but also civic education. In Germany, the educational administration recently emphasized the need of a stronger civic education at vocational schools. In many German federal states, this emphasis resulted in educational tasks for vocational schools aimed at the promotion of students’ democratic competences by the whole school staff (e.g., Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs of Lower Saxony 2021). Although all teachers at vocational schools are explicitly addressed by this task, those who specialized in civics or political science may have particular responsibilities.

So far, little is known about how civic education is conceptualized by the school staff at vocational schools. This is of particular importance as teachers’ education-related views influence how they teach (Reichert et al. 2021). Teachers’ views may affect the selected topics and classroom activities for students’ learning (e.g., Fives/Buehl 2012). Thus, this study assumes that what teachers think about the aims of civic education matters to their teaching (Martens/Gainous 2013). Given the missing empirical knowledge regarding vocational teachers’ views on civic education, this study investigates the following research question:

How does the school staff at vocational schools vary in their understanding of civic education?

Following a multi-method research design, the present study used individual semi-structured interviews and a standardized online questionnaire to explore participants’ views on civic education at vocational schools. The study was conducted in 2022 in the region of Lower-Saxony in Germany. 20 of the 130 official vocational schools in Lower-Saxony were invited to take part in the study. In total, 10 vocational schools participated. In each participating vocational school, the school principals, department head of the vocational school of the dual system (Berufsschule), team leaders of politics teachers, and politics teachers were invited to take part in the study. In total, so far n = 55 participants were interviewed and participated in the online questionnaire. Each interview was audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. A qualitative content analysis was conducted with MAXQDA to compare participants’ views on the concept of civic education at vocational schools. A combination of a deductive and inductive approach was used to analyze the content of the interviews. A set of categories describing main facets of democratic competences was first derived deductively from the literature to systematize participants’ views. For this purpose, the framework of the Europarat (2018) was used as it provides an internationally shared understanding of democratic competences. The deductively derived (sub )facets were than extended based on the interviews, which resulted in a final coding scheme with 5 main categories and 28 sub-categories. Each response regarding teachers’ concept of civic education was categorized with the (sub-)facets of democratic competences they applied to.

Most of the interviewed participants (65%) conceptualized civic education at vocational school as the transmission of knowledge about democratic institutions, processes and concepts. Fostering student’s democratic skills was also largely considered by the teachers to be an important aim of civic education (56%). Almost half of the interviewed participants (47%) conceptualized civic education at vocational school as promoting students’ participation in democratic processes to stand up for their interests and for the democracy itself. The transmission of democratic attitudes was also pointed out by half of the interviewed participants to be an important aim of civic education (47%). Only 37% of the participants stated that civic education should foster students’ democratic values.Taken together, the interviewed teachers placed a strong emphasis on promoting students’ democratic knowledge and skills. However, an emphasis on knowledge transmission was not aligned with a focus on the promotion of skills and vice versa. In contrast, the results indicate that teachers who emphasize knowledge transmission are systematically less likely to highlight the promotion of skills (AME = -0.25; p < 0.10). These results of the qualitative data are also confirmed by the quantitative data of the follow-up questionnaire. Taken together, the interviewed school staff can be classified in relation to their views about the concepts of civic education. Following Reichert and Torney-Purta (2019), it may be expected that distinct understandings of the concepts will provide different types of instruction that then may lead to different learning opportunities for students. This study showed that there is a mixed understanding regarding the concept of civic education among the school staff of vocational schools. Enhancing teacher development requires to understand heterogeneity among vocational school teachers as different aims of civic education may be associated with different pedagogical approaches and learning outcomes (e.g., Torney-Purta/Amadeo 2011).

Busse, R., Krebs, P., Seeber, S., &Seifried, J. (2022). Zur Bedeutung der beruflichen Bildung für die politische Partizipation von Auszubildenden. berufsbildung. Zeitschrift für Theorie-Praxis-Dialog, 75(195), 3–8. https://doi.org/10.3278/BB2203W002 Council of Europe (2018). Reference framework of competences for democratic culture. Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing. Fives, H., & Buehl, M. M. (2012). Spring cleaning for the “messy” construct of teachers’ beliefs: What are they? Which have been examined? What can they tell us? In K. R. Harris, S. Graham, T. Urdan, S. Graham, J. M. Royer, & M. Zeidner (Eds.), APA educational psychology handbook. Individual differences and cultural and contextual factors (pp. 471–499). American Psychological Association. Galston, W. A. (2001). Political Knowledge, Political Engagement, and Civic Education. Annual Review of Political Science, 4(1), 217–234. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.4.1.217 Reichert, F., Lange, D., & Chow, L. (2021). Educational beliefs matter for classroom instruction: A comparative analysis of teachers’ beliefs about the aims of civic education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 98, 103248. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2020.103248 Torney-Purta, J., & Amadeo, J. A. (2011). Participatory niches for emergent citizenship in early adolescence: An international perspective. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 633(1), 180-200. Martens, A. M., &Gainous, J. (2013). Civic Education and Democratic Capacity: How Do Teachers Teach and What Works? Social Science Quarterly, 94(4), 956–976. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6237.2012.00864.x Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs of Lower Saxony (2021). Foster civic education at public general and vocational schools. https://www.mk.niedersachsen.de/download/169692 /Erlass_zur_Staerkung_der_Demokratiebildung_in_Niedersachsen.pdf